Many small children can see ghosts that the adults around them cannot see. Usually, they do not speak of these visions, for they have learned that grown-ups will rebuke them, will tell them they are making things up. Irma was five years old in the summer of 1936. She and her family were staying at a resort hotel in the Canadian Rockies. One day two beautiful young people checked in. The man was tall and solidly built. The woman was short and slim. They seemed very much in love. The gossip went that they were on their honeymoon.

Irma was told they were champion swimmers, and had to come here to put the final touches on their training for the Olympic games, which were to be held a few weeks later in Berlin. They would go off every day and swim in the surrounding lake and rivers.  One morning at breakfast they mentioned that they were going to swim to a small island not far away. A waiter, who lived year-round in the area, overheard them and warned them to be careful. There was a very strong whirlpool near that island, with a poweful undertow. Over the years, several people had been drowned there, he said. The young man merely smiled, and glanced about the table as if saying, “These local people always have their stories.” A few minutes later, they left  the hotel in their swimsuits, laughing, as though they didnt have a care in the world. An hour later, the man came stumbling back alone. He seemed exhausted, and in such a dire emotional state that he was weeping and throwing up. He gasped out a tale that his wife has been caught in the whirlpool and that he had bveen unable to find her.

The whole hotel was thrown into a frenzy of anguish. A search party was organized, but the young woman’s body was never found. Little Irma had a question all her own, For when the man returned, she could see his young wife stnading behind him. She was wearing a wet bathing suit and was doubled over as if in pain. She was crying, “How could you? How could you?

Irma tagged along with the search party, and all the time she could see the drowned woman behind her husband, tears running down her cheeks. Even when the group returned to the hotel, the little girl could see the young woman a few feet from her husband.  This continued all summer for Irma. She could stand on a high place near the hotel and look across the water at the island. She could see the young woman on its shore, bent over as though in pain, as though she had been hit in the stomach. And even at that distance, Irma could hear her cry:

“Why did he do it? I loved him!”

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